The Housing Market Is Depressing America

Townhall.com ^ | April 20, 2012 | Scott Rasmussen

[Kaslin]

Just 49 percent of homeowners in America now believe their home is worth more than they paid for it.

Rasmussen Reports has asked that question for years, and it has never before fallen below the 50 percent mark. This represents a sea change in personal finances that challenges core assumptions about the way our economy works.

Most Americans were brought up to believe the cornerstone of good financial planning was to buy a home, pay the mortgage on time and watch the equity grow. That doesn't work at a time when home values are declining.

Economists measure the lost equity in housing to be in the trillions of dollars. But the impact on individual families is even greater. Consider this: Four years ago, 80 percent of homeowners thought their home was worth more than they paid for it. That number fell to 62 percent last fall and 49 percent today.

In just four years, roughly one out of three homeowners went from having made money with a supposedly safe investment to seeing all the gains disappear. That's a stunning turnaround for people who thought they were doing the right thing and buying their share of the American Dream.

Adding to the sense of gloom, homeowners don't think we've hit bottom yet. Just 21 percent believe that their home will go up in value this year, while 25 percent expect further declines.

Even looking ahead five years, only 46 percent believe their home will go up in value. Such a low number would have been unthinkable until recently, and it's one reason many homeowners feel trapped.

The housing crisis was triggered by a soft economy, and most Americans recognize that it won't be solved until the overall economy regains strength. They're not looking for a quick fix with some magical new housing policy. Instead, they have serious concerns about jobs, inflation, federal spending and deficits that cloud prospects for a robust recovery.

But while the soft economy was the trigger, most homeowners recognize that the underlying cause of the housing crisis was a corrupt relationship between the federal government, elected politicians and well-connected financiers. While the housing market was collapsing, the financiers were getting bailed out.

Seventy-seven percent have an unfavorable opinion of Freddie Mac, and 73 percent say the same about Fannie Mae. Those two government-sponsored enterprises changed the rules of the mortgage game. One "innovation" was to encourage policies that let people buy a home with no money down. Most Americans reject that type of new math.

Fannie and Freddie, encouraged by politicians from both parties, sought to make homeownership available to everyone. But only 26 percent of Americans believe that should be the guiding principal of federal housing policy. Sixty-three percent think the primary goal in issuing a housing loan should be whether the homeowner can repay it.

By ignoring generations of experience and the common-sense wisdom of the American people, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac broke the housing market. Even more, they turned the American Dream for millions into a financial nightmare. Adding insult to injury, Fannie and Freddie stuck taxpayers with a bailout bill currently estimated at more than $300 billion -- with no end in sight.

[muawiyah]

I have no idea where new housing developments are going up in Maryland. Here in adjoining Virginia all we have are fill-in development ~ a house at a time.

All the big dogs were wiped out ~ literally.

The cause of the housing problem is OVERBUILDING. That was made possible through the illegal importation of MILLIONS OF LATIN AMERICAN laborers who worked for 20% of base wage.

The root cause has been and continues to be non-enforcement of our immigration laws.

[LevinFan]

“next rounder of foreclosures is expected to hit in may,”

This is good news for some of us. As someone who is trying to buy a home, I sacrificed for years to save money for a time like this.

If you prepare for the future, times like this can be a gold mine. But you can’t live for the moment. Getting ahead is more about planning ahead than anything else.

[LomanBill]

Given the shape of things, "depressing" isn't what the Fabian Socialist parasites had in mind...

 

BOHICA.

 

 

 

" Uhhhh, that's not ours either! "

---Weiner, Obama, Perry, Pelosi, Frank, Pritzker and Associates, LLLP.

 

 

Follow the....

http://www.campaignmoney.com/finance.asp?type=in&cycle=08&criteria=pritzker&fname=penny

 

Billionaire business mogul Penny Pritzker is a member of one of America’s richest families and was the Finance Chair for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.  It was Pritzker that led the prolific, and illegal, fundraising that helped power Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.  She was the chair of Chicago-based Superior Bank’s board for five years.  Pritzker was into subprime lending before it became all the rage starting in around 2000.  Prtizker's chairmanship was to concentrate on sub prime lending, principally on home mortgages, but for a while in subprime auto lending, too, after the Pritzkers' bank acquired its wholesale mortgage organization division, Alliance Funding, in December 1992. Back then they called it "predatory lending." Superior Bank went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits; 1,406 depositors lost much of their life savings.  This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior’s owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages. On Nov. 1 [2002] the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. pointed the finger at Ernst & Young, Superior’s auditor, in a fraud suit filed in federal court here.  But that action came two months after a group of Superior depositors accused the bank’s owners and directors, including two members of the Pritzker family, of racketeering....

[snip]

...Pritzker is chairman of Classic Residence by Hyatt, luxury senior living communities in 11 states; chairman of The Parking Spot, which owns and operates off-airport parking facilities in nine cities; chairman of the credit data company TransUnion and chairman of Pritzker Realty.  She also sits on the board of Global Hyatt and plays a role in numerous non-profit groups, including serving as chairman of the Olympic village portion of Chicago’s bid to win the 2016 Summer Games. 

 

http://www.theobamafile.com/_associates/PennyPritzker.htm

 

 

 

Nudge nudge nudge...

 

[Gilbo_3]

What amazes me is that homeowners dont get together and form a political union to slow new housing development when house prices are going down.

how does that work ??? so long as mcmansions continue to sell and make money for the developers, and the resulting tax base, whose going to stop it ???

further up the food chain in the political/finance trap is where wealth gets destroyed without being noticed...Im almost ready for hyperinflation, so that i get the mortgage paid off with those inflated dollars...

for the price of a couple cheeseburgers in new money, the house will be secured under the old contract, *unless* that contract is voided by new political/finance regs, of course ???...heheheheh...

we-r-screwed, actually, WERE screwed long ago, and a lil lobbying and ballot box initiative seems too little, too late...

[Buckeye McFrog]

AND the next round of foreclosures is expected to hit in May which is reported to double what is currently on the market for sale.

That Giant Sucking Sound you hear is the whirlpool firing-up and getting ready to take The One's political career down with it.

[LibsRJerks]

What amazes me is that homeowners dont get together and form a political union to slow new housing development when house prices are going down.

**

Agreed. This is the problem where we live. Zillions of homes in forclosure,yet they just keep throwing up new fab homes and townhomes, further clogging the SAME roads we all use.

Our renters who were thinking of buying our underwater house from us just decided to move into one of these new homes. Of course, they are younger and want that brand new home instead of one that might need a little remodeling, but is in a much better neighborhood and location.

But, noooooo — they’ve just got to have that “new house” smell.

But, that’s ok. We’re moving back in it, we’re going to keep it up, and we’re going to hang onto it, come hell or high water. It’s ours, and it’s our investment. Someday we’ll recoup, I’m hoping.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”how does that work ??? so long as mcmansions continue to sell and make money for the developers, and the resulting tax base, whose going to stop it ???”

Right , and the spending required to support those new developments is larger than those increases in tax base requiring even higher local taxes which the clueless sheep go along with, hostages of the resulting traffic jams and crowded schools that they seem to have no idea why things changed for the worst.

I used to propose passing a significant development tax on developers per acre that would be passed on to new houses price which would slow this process, instead of my taxes always going up. But they wont do it. Why?

1) Affordable house a priority goal of politicians even more than Green and current homeowners are clueless to how it hurts them.

2) Gives More representation in congress, even if they are illegals

3) NEW Voting base become MORE liberal and more accepting of taxes and spending.

To #3, when I moved here my county was solidly Republican, last year Dems in charge added ‘gender identity’ to the housing and employment discrimination laws. That will tell you what development did.

[Huebolt]

Only an idiot could not see that prices were a reflection of easier money and nothing in real value.

One thing I don't see noted here is INFLATION. Anyone remembering jimmeee cawter also remembers hyper-inflation. So someday, when obamination inflation really hits, it'll be like the days when people who bought huge estates in the 1960's for (I kid you not) $50,000, were paying less for their mortgage in inflated currency than most RENTERS.

The problem is to keep property taxes out of the inflation picture, as prop 13 did in kalifornica, briefly though, it seems. Moonbeam Brown is going to take that one away pronto.

Barring property taxes to infinity, holding on to a house may be ok, if hyper-inflation is not too high a price.

Imagine an electric bill of $7000 and a house payment of $1,900. Don't think about gasoline...

[woodbutcher1963]

“What amazes me is that homeowners dont get together and form a political union to slow new housing development when house prices are going down”

I DID NOT KNOW THERE WERE SOCIALISTS ON FREEREPUBLIC.

Are you kidding me ?

[sickoflibs]

RE :”“What amazes me is that homeowners dont get together and form a political union to slow new housing development when house prices are going down”
I DID NOT KNOW THERE WERE SOCIALISTS ON FREEREPUBLIC.
Are you kidding me ?”

Just because I am not a robot brain dead corporatist does not make me a socialist.

My taxes have gone up many times to support all the $$$ the developers have been making ruining our county and lowing our house prices.

Socialize that!

[sickoflibs]

Your developer friends have turned my county from solid conservative to solid liberal.

[muawiyah]

Developers, then homeowners, pay a significant development tax ~ it's presented mostly as "home price", where it's passed through to the buyers, and in hookup fees ~ sewer, water, electricity, phones, cable, etc. You name it they already tax it ~ this is not unploughed territory.

Here in Virginia we tap developers for the cost of roads ~ you, as a buyer, pay that.

We continue to suffer from years of neglect where local politicians imagined that if they didn't build roads that would stop development in its track.

BTW, that doesn't work at all. You end up with massive development and 2 lane pea gravel and tar roads.

[Sequoyah101]

For decades I’ve said that you buy a house to build a home not for an investment. The claims it is a good investment have always been a myth for the most part. Not much more than a tax break sponsored enforced minor savings program and money laundering scheme for the money changers.

Look back at the housing price indices... housing has almost always gone up at the rate of inflation and from that you need to deduct the interest and the taxes and the upkeep. Sure, it is true you are paying back “old” money with inflated dollars, that is part of the deal.

Buy a house to make a home not as an investment.

[woodbutcher1963]

“but was never sustainable by the sheer demographics.”

The demographics are exactly what sustaines the market long term. For example, our population is growing from 300 million. People need to live somewhere. Therefore, we will always need new housing. On the average most economists state we need to build 1,4 million NEW homes every year just to keep up with population growth of 300 million. Plus, houses need to be replaced every 75 years on the average(they burn down, tornados, floods,hurricanes,etc.).
However, our population is aging so more are moving into multifamily housing of some sort. Also, the southern part of the country is growing faster than the northern. Therefore, long term there will be more demand for housing in AZ & TX than there will be in MI & NY.

What we are in is still a correction from the biggest real estate boom EVER. Hence, the biggest correction ever. What people lost sight of is that real estate is a LONG TERM INVESTMENT. There were too many “Flip This House” purchases between 1999-2005. Also, all real estate is local. The Washington, DC metro area had about a 15% correction in real estate values. Phoenix, LA & Miami had substantially more.

What was not sustainable were the unprecidented increase in real estate values and the volume(2 million) that was built. What we are slowly going back to is a normal real estate market that grows 6% a year on the average and you need to put 20% down. However, some areas like Phoenix are up substantially from the bottom because it has attracted investors buying houses to rent out and snowbirds buying retirement homes from the north, especially Canada. This is also happening in Florida too, where Quebecers are flying down to buy because of the favorable exchange rate.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”We continue to suffer from years of neglect where local politicians imagined that if they didn't build roads that would stop development in its track....BTW, that doesn't work at all. You end up with massive development and 2 lane pea gravel and tar roads”

You need to learn how to figure out their motives.

The Dem in charge of my county during the peak development years that he supported fully said the same thing, that building roads just encourages more development, all while he supported tens of thousands of new houses being built here..

That argument makes no sense, it's like saying the cart pulls the horse.

The reason why these libs encourage massive development without the required road work is to build voters support for public transportation at taxpayer expense, the LAST THING I WANT HERE.

[metesky]

People leveraged their homes in order to buy at WalMart?

You're a genius.

[muawiyah]

There are tens of thousands of miles of open road in this country where there's virtually no development.

The motive behind "development" is not the same as that behind roads.

[muawiyah]

The only reason the DC area looks like it had a 15% adjustment is the lag in tax assessment cycles. They were definitely BEHIND the curve.

In reality we had a very steep 50% adjustment!

We recovered some of that before too terribly many people went belly up. My own neighborhood had a 30% foreclosure rate ~ fairly typical for DC's Virginia suburbs BTW. We've recovered to the price levels seen in 2005.

Our Hispanics are being rapidly replaced by legal Russian immigrants (most of whom have been here 10 or more years).

[woodbutcher1963]

What we have done in my town to slow growth is we have voted to give the town conservation commision a $5 million bond to be used to buy up available land so that developers can not build new subdivisions.

[IronJack]

“What was not sustainable were the unprecidented increase in real estate values and the volume(2 million) that was built.”

That was my point.